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In this case study, we designed a family game to explore whether this could be an effective and fun approach for raising the awareness of family members towards their energy use and, in the long run, to provide an effective tool for affecting their habits regarding sustainable behavior. The design of the family game implemented the metaphor of electricity as flowing liquid, fostered fun experiences and supported competitive and social elements. Dutch families with children, aged 5-11 years, participated in the design and evaluation of theconcept. We obtained valuable insights into the use and understanding of electricity by the families, how the families looked at responsible behaviors around their usage and how a game could integrate into the family context in a fun way.

Objectives. After a hard day’s work, we need to recover from work stress. Two frequently reported activities to relieve stress are television (TV) watching and paced breathing exercises. We investigated the potential of combining these techniques. Method. Two explorativeexperiments were conducted. In both experiments, stress was measured through physiological monitoring (heart rate, blood pressure, skinconductance, peripheral temperature, and respiration) and the Stress Arousal Checklist [3]. All experiments ended with a semi-structured interview. The first experiment explored TV-content: free cable-TVwatching versus a “dedicated relaxation video” (waterfall scenery).The second experiment explored the effects of watching video content (real-life nature video and computer-generated visualizations) with- and without a visual paced breathing instruction. Results. In thefirst experiment, both conditions were reported as relaxing, but neither was sizably doing more so. The physiological results do not clearly differ between both conditions. The main finding is that different people like different content to relax; some found the TV-content “not as relaxing” whereas others found the dedicated relaxation content “rather boring”. In the second experiment participants had some difficulty following the paced breathing instruction. However, the participants who did manage to follow the instruction properly showed alarge heart rate variability. The real-life nature scenery hada stronger effect on stress reduction (self-reported) and was also preferred by most participants. Conclusion and discussion. Strong interpersonal differences exist regarding video material for relaxation. This may be due to the fact that free TV watching offered more arousing stimuli but also more control than the waterfall video. Both control over one’s environment [1] and visual content [2] can impactstress levels and these effects likely differ per individual. Therefore, to be relaxing, video content should be engaging yet not too arousing and should ideally be selected by the viewer. The presented results provide directions regarding the use of video content for stress relief. Paced breathing may be a beneficial addition but furtherinvestigation is needed to e.g. find the optimal paced breathing settings and to examine possible learning effects.

Measuring stress levels in the ICU is not well defined and lacks reliable and valid methods of detection. ICU patients experience different kinds of stress like pain, dyspnoea, anxiety and general discomfort. Skin conductance has recently been shown to be a promising physiological indicator of pain assessment in the postoperative period and in premature and term infants. However, to our knowledge there are no case reports addressing skin conductance response (SCR) in ICUpatients. We describe three cases of SCR with various stressors in an ICU setting. A psychologist observed patients during SCR measurements. SCR was measured with a Nexus-10 physiological signals monitor.